Wake up, Red Cross!

[justalurkr]

Because of your outdated rules that put me on the permanent defer list, you are missing out on O- pediatric donor blood or, as your valued competition at LifeSouth calls it, "liquid gold."
:-P

Comments

[nialla]

Why are you on the list? Travel to a foreign country risk?

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Because I was in Spain (Western Europe) within 20 years of 2001, ZOMG MAD COW.

The rules have since narrowed down to a specific amount of time as a member of the military or the dependent thereof. As a civilian student there for 10 months, I'm no longer considered at risk for carrying ZOMG MAD COW, though this does leave me wondering WTF we were feeding our military.

ZOMG MAD COW trivia: it kills you totally and quite horribly within seven months of contracting it, and as of 2001 there were ZERO cases of ZOMG MAD COW Mary.

[nialla]

There's an incubation period that can be years with no symptoms, and there's no way to know if you have it until they take a sample from your brain after you're dead. I'm not sure what the limit is in humans, but in cattle it's considered safe after 8 years.

With that in mind, you'd think two decades clear would be fine and dandy for them to tap a vein.

I'm still not able to donate myself. Still classed as anemic, though I haven't had a test since I had my procedure done in September.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Eight years? It's definitely been that a few times over.

Hope your procedure did some good.

[nialla]

From what I recall from watching ReGenesis, prion diseases like MCD are super-duper scary from the medical perspective. They can't test for it, they don't really know for certain how it works, and definitely don't know how to treat it. I think that's whey there's an abundance of caution at work.

If you haven't watched ReGenesis, I think it's free on Hulu.

[eviljr.livejournal.com]

I can understand some of their rules, but really most of them really need to be updated.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

As their valued competition at LifeSouth has so cleverly done. They were at Dragon*con last year, and had the shift supervisor who took one look at my O- type, said "liquid gold!" and made sure I had an escort until there was a cannula in my arm and I couldn't bolt.

Kinda creepy at the time, but highly amusing in hindsight, especially since I held them up for a banana, two cookies and, like, three diet Cokes.